My blog
Food, Festivals and Falooda
Written on:Monday, June 14, 2010
Its festival time again and whist not playing at Download or Isle of Wight I am lucky enough to be involved in some terrific events.
I played at Bradford Mela this weekend. The Mela is a huge event held over two days in a park in Bradford. It has a number of stages and caters for pretty much every taste. The Saturday was a bit of a rush as I was also playing in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar so I played a duo set with bass player Jenni Molloy between twelve and one and then dashed off to do a Matinee performance with the show
Mixin' it up.
Written on:Tuesday, March 16, 2010
I did a solo guitar concert the other day. Nothing new in that except rather than just playing jazz tunes I included a few piece more commonly found in the classical repertoire. Nothing too heavy, not Bach's Chaconne or Britten's Nocturne but rather five pieces by Brazilian composer Villa Lobos, in fact it was his five preludes. They seemed to go down okay and I certainly enjoyed playing them but I couldn't help wondering if I should do things like that and mix musical styles.
When virtuoso violinist Nigel Kennedy began playing jazz
Ludamus, Gym and Whale Juice.
Written on:Wednesday, March 10, 2010
March 9th 2010 and I suppose this is my first blog of the year. My New years resolution to write more blogs has joined my eat more healthily and go to the gym more frequently resolutions in the failed pile, actually I'm going to label it a "still to be addressed pile" just so I can appear more optimistic. In fairness though I have been to the gym four times this year although one of those consisted of me looking through the door at the machines, I'm a great believer in breaking myself in gradually.
If I'm honest none of it is lazines
Adventures at Pinewood.
Written on:Friday, December 18, 2009
It's been a little while since I put pen to paper (or whatever the digital equivalent is) to tell you of my adventures so I do apologise and I will try and be more frequent in my blogging in future. That could be my New Years resolution.
Last time I wrote I had just played on a recording in composer/pianist Ronnie Smith's house. A wonderful experience, memorable for its amusing anecdotes as much as it's fabulous music. I will never look at frozen pizza in the same way. In the mixing stage it was decided that some of the tracks would
Recording with Ronnie
Written on:Thursday, November 05, 2009
I played on a recording by pianist/composer Ronnie Smith recently. It was a terrific and a somewhat novel experience. Ronnie had decided to record in his house, he has a fabulous piano and decided that he wanted to use it on his recording. Ronnie has a beautiful big house situated in Hertfordshire but to convert it into a recording studio was far from easy, in fact for recording engineer/expert Matt Howe in must have been a colossal undertaking. Starting on the Friday, with numerous trips back and forth to Pinewood studios, his house and va
